The Freezing
It starts, all things considered, as an ordinary day for Hariel.
She wakes up at a Black family property in Paris, Kreacher prepares her a rose bath and a light breakfast, she walks to her university, attends her classes, eats a small sandwich – also prepared by Kreacher, and thus delicious – attends more classes, walks to a nearby café and orders her usual tea and small patisserie.
From there, she should have politely discouraged the waiter's flirting, walked around the streets of Paris, gotten dinner at a yet unexplored little restaurant in some corner of the city, then walked back to her flat to a terribly worried Kreacher who asks her where she was and what she was doing despite the fact that it is the exact same routine every day.
That is not what happens.
Instead, as Hariel daintily sips her Earl Grey tea and suppresses a hedonistic moan at the taste of her chocolate opéra, she hears a faint chime, signaling the entrance of another customer to the small café.
It is one of those curious things that no one can help. She knows the chiming is merely for another customer, being a faithful customer to the café herself and hearing it at least four times in a sitting. She also knows that the customer is likely just another person with no particularly interesting characteristics. And yet, upon hearing the sound, despite knowing exactly what she would find if she looked, Hariel cannot help glancing up at the new customer.
She is surprised to find that there is no customer. How curious. Has the door opened by itself? Is it someone under an invisibility cloak that has come in?
She rapidly dismisses this last thought. No, she has not had dealings with the Magical World in a long time, and she gets along famously with the French Minister of Magic (Fleur's father, as it so happens), so he would have warned her if there was even a whisper of a doubt that someone has come looking for her.
Belatedly, Hariel laughs at her foolishness. From where she sits, the door is partially blocked by an old bookshelf, reaching to the average adult's waist. It is probably simply a child that has come in the shop, and due to his shortness, she is unable to see him from where she is sitting.
Hariel wonders if the child has been sent by a grandmother craving sweets, or perhaps by his parents who seek to foster independence by sending him to buy bread.
If he is being sent on an errand, then Hariel will be sure to buy him a sweet of his choice to reward him for a job well done. Her social interactions are so very limited these days, after all, and she has always harbored a soft spot for children…
A small black shoe peeks out from the shadow of the bookshelf, and Hariel nearly giggles in delight- the shoe is so very small! This child is much younger than she expected!
Her giggle, however, is caught in her throat, cruelly and abruptly strangled there by what she sees next.
A frisson courses through her – it is not fear, for fear does not come easily to her anymore, but a bone-deep feeling of unsettlement. It is unease, a ghostly serpentine tongue licking down her spine, a stranger walking over her grave, small bugs crawling all over her skin.
For, coming out from the bookshelf's shadow is a child no more than three.
And he is cursed.